« Exhibitions’ ruins / Emotional Landscapes » is a discursive exhibition on the nature of exhibitions, or rather on what remains of exhibitions; Somehow a necrophagous & cannibal exhibition – not only is this exhibition composed of remains, or fragments, of exhibitions, but it feeds itself from these.

The artworks are as many autonomous elements that articulate themselves around their past histories, past moments of exhibitions. Assembled, they generate an exhibition constituted of elements that fundamentally belongs to itself, literally creating its support structure.

To use a common analogy, as opposed to the idea of a ghost, here we only deal with a shell, the rests of a decomposing corpse. Here the exhibition is constituted of remains, here only the exhibition remains. An exhibition that becomes the shadow of a corpse, the corpse becoming its form. Similar to a constant expectation, this temporary recreation of diverse exhibitions uses bribes of the past as as-many fundamental elements for an exhibition to come. Similarly to decomposition being an active process, the artworks that compose the exhibition are as many invitations to engage with the landscape they contributed, and contribute, to form.

These emotional landscapes, these artworks are somehow referent to imaginary (or extinguished) landscapes. These environments emotionally charged refer to the creation of abstract environments, landscapes that reveals themselves as we are presented with them. Illusory as they are personal and mental, these moments characterise all the reactions that we experience when confronted to this temporary grouping of art works (an exhibition) – artworks that constitute an exhibition that embodies itself in the mind of the one who sees it. Each artwork draws a part of the environment of an exhibition, and further more offers an environment in itself.

Gallery Text:

Stefan Brüggemann realises his artwork OFF (A 1969 DAN FAVIN UNTITLED SCULPTURE TURNED OFF) in unplugging a Dan Flavin. Discussing the memory of an artwork, this piece offers a gloomy & emotional contribution to the exhibition, ‘as a light sculpture switched off is a complete ruin’.

The monochrome photographs (Not Yet Titled, 2006), and the abstract colour grid (The Weather Scales – Waves Height 24h), plays upon the abstraction of colour insisting in there true nature (the photographs being colours obtained with no film or image, the colour grid being everyday monochrome from newspaper). All abstracted from Nicolas Garait’s end of studies shows, ruins literally transcribed within the frame of a collective exhibition.

Olivier Mosset’s artwork « Cimaise – Sculpture en 5 éléments » (Stands, Sculpture in 5 elements) from 1993 is a sculpture composed with motifs, five white monochrome structures where what is announced is what is. A minimal artwork that becomes, at least partially, as from its use and its title, the physical structure of the exhibition.

François Morellet presents two 1⁄2 artworks (69 & Doggystyle) « that for the time of the exhibition have the same meaning (even the same value) as those two 1⁄2 works remaining in Cholet in France » in the artist studio. Remaining of artworks « frivolous & rude whilst being very very minimal, precision & absurdity always together » extracted, at least partially, from his exhibition « Geometrie dans les spasmes (Geometry in spasmes) from 1986.

« Frequency of an Image » is a sound piece recorded whilst the artist Loris Gréaud was thinking about his exhibition to come, therefore realising an electroencephalogram to listen to, “abstract & noisy, rather linear, the variations being rather minute, constant in my thoughts”. An exhibition to listen to, to imagine what will be.

Jeremy Millar’s « Notes Towards Zugzwang (almost complete) » is a sound piece abstracted from his recent movie Zugzwang (almost complete), where what we hear exceeds what had to be seen, as in an aleatory mode all the quotation and breves (all notes) written by Millar on Marcel Duchamp’ journey to England are read by artist Pierre Huyghe, the aleatory mode reminding us of the means of working so dear to Duchamp (as one can see in his accumulation of notes whilst preparing his large glass, to which his venue to England was decisive). This sound piece is broadcasted through loud speakers realised by M/M (Paris) & Gabriela Fridriksdottir, originally presented for Fridriksdottir’s exhibition during the 2005 Venice Biennale.

Elin Hansdottir in recreating her installation “Peripheral” replays an exhibition that originally took place in a former Telegraph-post- office in Berlin literally enlightens the exhibition.

Coming back to the Définition Méthode 307 (definition / Method DM) written by Claude Rutault for a group exhibition in London, the ruins are here the original assertion. The starting point for what is are the original ruins. A DM realised to be realised again. A moment of an exhibition, and a piece where a painting by Birgir Andrésson (Colour Proofs #2) becomes the original material for the piece by Rutault to exist. This painting becomes its own ruin within the ruin of an artwork among an accumulation of ruins. An artwork entering a moment of permanent pause, this painting becoming the ruin of itself (and paradoxically returning to its original state of a monochrome & quasi virgin canvas). Thus replaying the ruins of a past exhibition, transposed away from its original environment.

Gustav Metzger includes within the exhibition a spoken retrospective. Through his voice and through his words is presented the whole accumulation of his artistic career until now days, generating a mental exhibition in the mind of the one who hears it. Bribes of past elements dissolved that mostly do not exist any longer, (and have only been very briefly). An accumulation of moments of time, artworks & histories only existing through the voice, through the spoken word. A retrospective that only exist the time it takes to hear it within an exhibition. To quote Metzger, “Auto Destructive Art ends up with nothing, here we begin with nothing”. A spoken word retrospective begins with everything and produces nothing more, only everything.

Friday, 23 March 2007

CAROLINA CAYCEDOWords Don’t Come EasyMarch 23 – April 21, 2007Opening reception:Friday, March 23, 6-8pmBlack and White GalleryThe Chelsea Terminal Warehouse636 West 28th Street, Ground FloorNew York, NY 10001www.blackandwhiteartgallery.comCarolina Caycedo’s solo exhibition “Words Don’t Come Easy”.This exhibition comprises several projects that weave a fabric of independent but complementary experiences – all questioning the notion of “territories” in terms of their geographic reality and the imaginary and utopian dimension they generate, the relationship the individual constructs with her environment, a nation, an identity, a private or shared space, the connections created between ideas, individuals, artworks and structures.

Works in the show:PERIFONEO (initially installed at the Venice Biennale in 2003) was inspired by the Perifoneo - a communal sound system used in shanty towns of Bogota where the speakers are installed strategically around the neighbourhood. It is used to send all kind of social messages. The amplifier and mic are usually installed in a house with a telephone line, in order to notify any neighbour who receives a call. The microphone will be installed inside the gallery and will be open to anyone for singing, shouting or sending a message which will be heard outside the gallery through a loudspeaker.AUDIO MEX can be characterized as a singular form of auditory contemplation. The site of action is the Historic Center of Mexico City, recorded in May 2004. Caycedo creates a temporary, freed, epic zone where the big story and many little stories come together.GRAN PERRETON video shows scenes of human crowds that at first seem easily identifiable but little by little uncertainty sets in. The contact that takes place between individuals – exchanges, frictions, encounters, avoidance – may influence our perception of their environment, unless it is the environment that gives new meaning to their behavior. Perretón is a combination of words: Reggaeton, perreo and marathon. Reggaeton is a popular genre that comes from Puerto Rico, and combines Rap, reggae and dance hall. Perreo is how you dance reggaeton, doggy style, very sexy. A Perreo marathon was open on a Saturday night at Don Raul´s Bar, a reggaeton joint in Rincón, Puerto Rico.BANNER & FLAG SERIES highlights political awareness, autobiography, permanent displacement, design interventions and potential counter-imagery. These large scale hand sewn objects present aesthetic models for disarming configurations of power. Mixing flags of the places where Caycedo originates and where she lives - Puerto Rico/Colombia and flags of cultures in tension – USA/Iraq, Palestine/Israel and Lebanon/Israel creates a dialogue between those cultures by pointing to many shared formal elements (motifs, patterns and colors). Included in the show are several banners that wave Caycedo’s multiple cultural identities – the anchor theme for this exhibition.JUKEBOX, Local Motion (La Machetera) contains 50 CD’s and is a compilation of songs collected through the different cities where Caycedo lived or worked since 1995. The songs from the jukebox, are not only the soundtrack of her life, but also the soundtrack of the exhibition, an exhibition that presents Caycedo’s past and recent work dealing with issues of identity, conflict, movement, location, nationality and immigration. As such, music becomes a universal language, one that trespasses barriers and frontiers.

Tuesday, 20 March 2007

As part of the TALK SHOW exhibition taking part in Tranzit in Bratislvia, Slovakia, Pablo Leon de la Barra gave a Parangole* Workshop, based on Helio Oiticica's Parangoles.

"My entire evolution, leading up to the formulation of the Parangole, aims at this magical incorporation of the elements of the work as such, in the whole life-experience of the spectator, whom I now call 'participator'"Notes on the Parangole, Helio Oiticica"

tranzit.sk bratislavakunstverein munichinvite you to theTALK/SHOWMARCH 07 TO APRIL 14, 2007lectures (wednesdays, thursdays, fridays -) and projects (saturdays – tranzit workshops) byANARCHITEKTUR (DE),PABLO LEON DE LA BARRA (MEX/UK),JEREMY DELLER (UK),STEPHAN DILLEMUTH (DE),LUCA FREI (CH),FLORIAN HECKER (AT),SCOTT KING (UK)LOCAL MODERNITY / HEIKE ANDER (AT/DE),MICHAELA MELIAN (DE),ANDREAS NEUMEISTER (DE),PUBLISH AND BE DAMNED / KIT HAMMONDS (UK),ANNA SANDERS FILMS (F), FEAT. LIAM GILLICK (UK), DOMINIQUE GONZALES-FOERSTER (F), PIERRE HUYGHE (F), PHILIPPE PARRENO (F),SEAN SNYDER (USA/DE),JAN VERWOERT (DE)CURATED BY STEFAN KALMAR & DANIEL PIES KUNSTVEREIN MUNICH (DE)TALK/SHOW does what it says: over the period of 4 weeks a group of altogether 16 internationally reknown artists and cultural practioners are invited to deliver a TALK at Bratislava Academy of Fine Arts and Design. In the course of this programme a SHOW will build up step by step at tranzit workshops, with each invited guest contributing a work to the show. On a non-pragmatic level, however, TALK/SHOW also signifies the media format epitomizing what critics have called the denigration of the public sphere. Before the background of recent developments in the urban and political landscape of Bratislava, the project TALK/SHOW thus revolves around issues of the constitution of the public sphere and questions of public access to urban as well as discursive spaces in the face of their increasing normalisation, commercialisation and privatisation. TALK/SHOW will try to enter a dialogue with a local public by presenting comparable developments within the so-called -Western' world through the work of 16 international artists, architects, musicians, graphic designers, filmmakers and curators whose practices share a common interest in exploring the possibilities of articulating parallel structures to mainstream economies of space and discourse: sub-economies, sub- communities, sub-publishing, sub-architectures and sub-designs. While the invited groups and individuals are analysing and infiltrating the political, economical and urban realities of the early 21st Century, they at the same time employ these conditions to divert resources towards forms of production that critically re-negotiate questions of power, ownership and authorship within the public sphere. In this TALK/SHOW brings together a unique and internationally outstanding group of creative producers that are not only able to present developments and strategies parallel to those experienced in Slovakia but as a whole might create an atmosphere of inter-cultural exchange within which both sides will be able to discover common grounds.TALK/SHOW PROGRAM:WEDNESDAY 07. | lecture, VŠVU, 18.00>> JAN VERWOERTTHURSDAY 08. | lecture, VŠVU, 18.00>> PUBLISH AND BE DAMNED / KIT HAMMONDSFRIDAY 09. | lecture, VŠVU, 18.00>> SCOTT KINGSATURDAY 10. | projects, tranzit dielne | workshops, 18.00>> SCOTT KING, PUBLISH AND BE DAMNED, JAN VERWOERTWEDNESDAY 14. | lecture, VŠVU, 18.00>> STEPHAN DILLEMUTHTHURSDAY 15. | lecture, VŠVU, 18.00>> SEAN SNYDERFRIDAY 16. | lecture, VŠVU, 18.00>> LOCAL MODERNITIES / HEIKE ANDERSATURDAY 17. | projects, tranzit dielne | workshops, 18.00>> PABLO LEON DE LA BARRA-PARANGOLE WORKSHOPSEAN SNYDER, STEPHAN DILLEMUTH, LOCAL MODERNITIES,SCOTT KING, PUBLISH AND BE DAMNED, JAN VERWOERTWEDNESDAY 21. | lecture, VŠVU, 18.00>> ANARCHITEKTURTHURSDAY 22. | lecture, VŠVU, 18.00>> LUCA FREIFRIDAY 23. | lecture, VŠVU, 18.00>> ANDREAS NEUMEISTERSATURDAY 24. | projects, tranzit dielne | workshops, 18.00>> SEAN SNYDER, ANARCHITEKTUR, ANDREAS NEUMEISTER, LUCA FREILOCAL MODERNITIES, PABLO LEON DE LA BARRA, STEPHAN DILLEMUTH, SCOTT KING, PUBLISH AND BE DAMNEDWEDNESDAY 28. | screening, VŠMU, 18.00>> ANNA SANDERS FILMS with LIAM GILLICK, DOMINIQUE GONZALES-FOESTER, PIERRE HUYGHE, PHILIPPE PARRENOTHURSDAY 29. | lecture, VŠVU, 18.00>> MICHAELA MELIANFRIDAY 30., performnce, tranzit dielne | workshops, 18.00>> FLORIAN HECKERSATURDAY 31. projects, tranzit dielne | workshops, 18.00 (- APRIL 14, 2007)>> JEREMY DELLER, ANNA SANDERS FILMS, MICHAELA MELIAN, FLORIAN HECKER,LUCA FREI, SCOTT KING, PUBLISH AND BE DAMNED, PABLO LEON DE LA BARRA, STEPHAN DILLEMUTH, SEAN SNYDER, LOCAL MODERNITIES, ANARCHITEKTUR, ANDREAS NEUMEISTER, JAN VERWOERT

PARTICIPANTS:ANARCHITEKTUR (DE) is a group of Berlin based architects and theoreticians, regularly publishing a magazine on contemporary debates about architecture and urban planning. They are also the initiators of the “Camp for Oppositional Architecture” that, continuing in the tradition of socially committed groups of architects such as C.I.A.M. or Team 10, discusses the framework and opportunities for a politically involved contemporary production of architectural space.

PABLO LEÓN DE LA BARRA (UK/MEX) is a London based artist, curator, publisher and gallerist, who has curated numerous exhibitions dealing with urban and artistic practices all across Europe and South America. For TALK/SHOW de la Barra will initiate a Parangole workshop at tranzit workshops.

JEREMY DELLER (UK) is a London based artist and winner of the prestigious Turner Prize 2004. In his work he shifts between the roles of artist, curator and producer of a broad range of projects that often take shape in participatory modes and frequently sidestep the common demarcations between high and low, between art and everyday cultural practices. For TALK/SHOW he will present ‘The Battle of Orgreave’, a massive re-enactment of the British miner’s strike of 1984/85.

STEPHAN DILLEMUTH (DE) is a Munich based artist and cultural activist. He will present his artistic work as well as his collaborative research and project work from Friesenwall (Cologne) to Papertiger TV, the Summer Academy (Munich) and his speculative inquiry into the history of bohemia and the ‘Lebensreform’-movement.

LUCA FREI (SWE/CH) is a Swiss artist living in Lund, Sweden. In his work he has consistently been exploring the borders between art as an autonomous aesthetic practice and as a participatory public process. In Bratislava he will present his series of fictitious political posters ‘Gruppo Parole e Immagini”.

FLORIAN HECKER (AT/DE) is an artist and musician based in Vienna. Hecker is considered as one of the most innovative creative cultural producers in international electronic music working, among others, with technologies developed by architect and electronic music pioneer Ianis Xenakis.

SCOTT KING (UK) is a London based artist and one of the most important graphic designers of his generation. Among others, he has been art director of ID Magazine, Sleazenation, designed record covers for Morrissey, Pet Shop Boys, Suicide and also publishes the fanzine CRASH!

LOCAL MODERNITIES (DE/AT) is a research project mapping the locally specific articulations of post-war modernist architecture in the former Soviet Republics and their relations amongst each other. Heike Ander, curator and critc based in Vienna and Munich, will introduce the project and its rich archive of photographic documents.

MICHAELA MELIÁN (DE) is a Munich based artist and musician currently teaching at the Art Academy of Hamburg. She is a founding member of FSK and in her artistic work negotiates neglected histories of political dissent. Her contribution to TALK/SHOW is a trans-historical panorama of Munich bohemia from the 1910s to the 1970s

ANDREAS NEUMEISTER (DE) is a Munich based writer who regularly incorporates the idea of the visual in his literary work. His slide-show and reading 'Da Real World’ navigates through the ubiquitous horizon of acronyms saturating our life-worlds.

PUBLISH AND BE DAMNED (UK) is a touring archive and annual fair for alternative artists' publications that has, among others, been presented at Cubitt, London, Casco, Utrecht and LA MOCA, Los Angeles. Publish And Be Damned was initiated by Emily Pethick and Kit Hammonds, who will introduce the project at Bratislava Academy of Fine Arts.

ANNA SANDERS FILMS (F) is a fictitious persona living in Paris. Behind the mask of Anna Sanders operates a collective of artists and filmmakers that produces on 35 mm films that oscillate between documentary and fiction. The selection for TALK/SHOW will present works by Liam Gillick, Pierre Huyghe, Philippe Parreno, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster

SEAN SNYDER (DE/US) is a Berlin based artist whose work is an extended research into the imagery and the reporting of war. The intention is not to comment on political issues, but to investigate the representational modes of events that are consumed second hand. Snyder will present his video ‘Casio, Seiko, Sheraton, Toyota, Mars’ produced for 9th Istanbul Biennial which maps the transnational migration of global brands across enemy territories and ideological demarcations.

JAN VERWOERT (DE) is a Berlin based critic working as contributing editor for frieze. He teaches at Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam and writes, among others, for Metropolis M, Afterall and Piktogram. His talk 'From Appropriation to Invocation’ discusses the crisis of historiography coinciding with the crisis of the nation state and our definitions of social communities: 'Many seek to bring back the naåtional myth. But this is not where we want to go. We live surrounded by the ghosts of unresolved conflicts. Evoking these ghosts in the clandestine ceremonies of critical art practice may open up ways to construct alternative communities around a different sense of shared histories.’and others...

On the first aniversary of his passing away, Agnes B dedicates an issue to Raymond Hanis. It is conceived as a polyphonic tribute, composed of postcards (Raymond loved the format) sent in by his friends and admirers.

Matthiue Laurette's postcard image, comes from a project Hains and Laurette did together in 2002. Raymond Hains, 75 and Matthieu Laurette, 32, photographed each other on a trip to Saint Malo and Mont Saint-Michel, two popular tourist destinations in the north of France. Hains photographed the Galerie Laurette, an artisanal gallery owned by Matthieu Laurette's parents, and Laurette standing in front of his old high school. Laurette, in turn, photographed Hains at the Musée Grévin sitting around with Jean-Paul Sartre or looking at Picasso. In doing so Hains and Laurette reconstructed new images of themselves and their respective worlds.www.pointdironie.com

Tuesday, 13 March 2007

Stefan Bruggemann's film A Production of Nothing forms part of the exhibitionClearly Invisible – An (invisible) ArchiveConsulta – Centre d’Art Santa Monica, BarcelonaCurated by Filipa Ramos16.03.2007 – 10.06.2007

AbsenceClearly Invisible, which will be presented at Consulta in Centre d’Art Santa Monica, takes absence as it starting point.The exhibition is about the production of an archive that doesn’t exist, for most of its contents are invisible, inexistent or they have took failure as their inspiration. It intends to be a reflection about how emptiness, void and incompleteness have an infinite potential in artistic creation.Therefore, Clearly Invisible is the most extended visual possibility of seeing something that can’t or shouldn’t be seen. Both Mario Garcia Torres’ (Monclova, Mexico, 1975) A Never-to-be-seen-by-the-patron Artwork (2004) and Alexandre Estrela’s (Lisbon, 1971) The Dark Stands Still (2000) explore impossibility of seeing in a different approach. Garcia Torres creates an artwork that should never be seen by its patron, or it will loose its authenticity, perverting the usual fruition of the work, especially by the person who got it. On the other side, Estrela hinders a camcorder from capturing images, perverting its use and function and reducing it to a mere object that, standing vertically on its lense and being captured by another video camera, functions as an almost useless action.

EmptinessClearly Invisible analyses how absence can be a productive subject (and object) in the artistic process and how the lack of something can interfere in the way in which a work of art is perceived. It is not an exhibition about invisibility in itself but a reflection about the results produced by the lack of visibility. This “condition of absence” is an extremely productive concept and can generate an enormous freedom from the weight of the visual in art.David Lamelas’ (Buenos Aires, 1946) installation view of the Límite de una proyección I (as showed in Instituto Torcuato Di Tella, Buenos Aires, 1967) is the perfect example of a work that transforms space and its perception through the presence of absence: there is nothing there but light. However, this luminous presence has an extremely powerful presence that becomes an essence in itself, disturbing our ideas of sculpture, space and image.Dora Garcia’s (Valladolid, 1965) Locked Room is an ongoing project that explores this narrow line between invisibility and emptiness. By creating a locked room where nobody but her can enter, the Spanish artist subtracts an area from the museum that becomes a mental space, for it is impossible to have access to it outside imagination. All the physical relations with it are totally broken and that space remains forever unreachable and unseen, even if still perceived. Sabine Delafon (Grenoble, 1975) has produced a series of works in which she reflects about both her condition as an artist and about her own presence inside spaces. The t-shirt she exhibits is a documentation of a performance she organized in Artissima Artfair, Turin, 2006, where there were people walking around the art fair with her name on it. The artist wasn’t present, which accentuated the idea of disappearance and non-correspondence between a text, a name and a person, this is connected to another of her works, I’m Looking for Myself, a series of public adds she displayed in the street, trying to find someone who could be similar (in different ways) to her.

VoidClearly Invisible is a research-oriented project that has a very strong documental weight, therefore most of the works exhibited, together with the books, texts and other materials, are part of the same concept of creating a selective and subjective archive that intends to research invisibility as an artistic practice. The project, baring in mind its intention to produce an archive, will give priority to all the processes behind the creation of artwork, in a sense, to the pre-production of invisibility. Davide Minuti (Turin, 1973) is showing In Between (you and me sometimes) (2007), in which he uses unsent letters and messages to establish impossible strategies of communication that oscillate between his memories and our thoughts, passing from past to future through the present conditions in which they are exposed to public knowledge. This work is part of a bigger installation from which everything was removed and all that is left to be seen is the immateriality of his own words.Jonathan Monk (Leicester, 1969) reflects about reproduction and loss in his Today is Just a Copy of Yesterday (Lisson/LeWitt) (2003). An image of an art handler installing a wall-piece by Sol LeWitt at London’s Lisson Gallery for their 1972 exhibition has been used to create a series of 80 slides of increasingly poor quality, doping each one of them from the precedent until the image is totally lost an unrecognizable.Ignasi Aballi’s (Barcelona, 1958) video Próxima Apariciòn (2005) explores anticipation and suspension while referring to cinema culture to endlessly announce something that never gets to happen. Also his documentation of Desapariciones (2002), 24 posters of films that the French filmmaker Georges Perec never made, move in an gap that the artist managed to create through the visual announces of something it will never happen; fiction, really and expectation get confused in an impossible promise.

NothingnessInvisibility, nothing and non-existent are not one and the same, the invisible is not something that doesn’t exist and nothing can exist as so. Instead, they can be seen as categories or states of something that cannot be seen but has a presence that manifests itself in a different way from the epiphany of the visual. Some of the artists reflect, inquire and demand about a series of contingent desires that surround these concepts. Stefan Brüggemann (Mexico City, 1975) presents The reflection of Nothing (2006), a video that reflects on the condition of productivity and un-productivity, as well as the meaning of such concepts as doing nothing. There is an odd bi-polarity between what is seen and what is listened to and the work is definitely the most visual presence in the show.Wolfgang Berkowski’s (Salzkotten, 1960) Berkowski distributes Drawings among workers (1994-2007) explores the emptiness of the endless possibilities of connection between image and text, because we never get to know what is real and fictional in the situation described and shown. Stefania Galegati (Ravenna, 1971) and Marco Raparelli (Rome, 1975) present their artist’s book AS a drop of water on a k-way (2007), a diary of the expectations and projects of two curators, Scintilla Robina and Norberto Dalmata who deal with all the frustrations and misunderstandings that happen inside the art system while trying to organize their first exhibition.

Invisibility, absence and nothingness are concepts that extend the limits of artistic creation to an endless array of possibilities, giving space and freedom to imagination, and that is what this exhibition is all about: developing an archive of unruled and uncontrolled possibilities of perceiving art and exhibitions. In this context, there’s nothing better than quoting Mel Bochner’s words:

The root word “image” need not to be used only to mean representation (in the sense of one thing referring to something other than itsef). To re-present can be defined as the shift in referential frames of the viewer from the space of events to the space of statements or vice-versa. Imagining (as opposed to imaging) is not a pictorial preoccupation. Imagination is a projection, the exteriorizing of ideas about the nature of things seen. It re-produces that which is initially without product.Mel Bochner, 1970

Monday, 12 March 2007

Los Super Elegantes will be playing in Mexico this week, for concert dates and places check www.lossuperelegantes.comMeanwhile, see here a video from you tube filmed by a fan with his mobile phone in one of their last apparitions in Mexico, where they invited the public to join them on stage and sing with them their old hit Panadero. Crazy.

In Marcelo’s loft in China Town in New York, there is a sofa and a light blue carpet and a white wooden floor with the paint scraping out, there is also a column and great old iron walls with an early XX century design. If you are familiar with Marcelo’s work, I guess you’ve seen some of these elements in his photos. Most of them participate in the photos as a background, with a silent presence almost as important to the naked bodies he shoots. Next to Marcelo’s sofa, there is a pile of cushions covered with a orange-brown zigzag seventies’ style fabric. In different occasions I’ve been to Marcelo’s house, the cushions have had different uses. In parties and screenings they serve as cushions where people can sit on the floor, sometimes when I’ve been drunk and stayed over I’ve made a bed with them and slept over them, I haven’t had sex in them yet, but I guess if they could speak they could tell great stories. The cushions are sometimes just piled to the side, as a tower or column, with one of Marcelo’s cat’s Rio or Rey on top of them. Over the last year Marcelo has been conducting a series of social experiments with the cushions which he calls pillows. “A pillow is a cushion without a sofa” he says. For it, he has invited friends to use the “pillows” in the way they think is more appropriate. The results range from the friendly, to the religious, to the sexual, becoming a users manual for the pillow/cushions: Brian covered with the pillows in a way it reminds of a crucified Christ, Renata giving birth to a pillow, JJ taking a pillows for a walk or then using a pile of pillow to have the right height to get a blow job, or a modernist house for the cats. I guess that liberating the cushions from the structure of the sofa, gives them a new freedom, from new sitting arrangements to sculptural forms to social and sexual uses. The cushion-pillows have also a family history within them, Marcelo’s mother used to be an interior designer in Sao Paulo, while his grandparents were furniture designers. Marcelo is now continuing the tradition, creating new editions of pillow-sculptures which can be covered with different fabrics, some vintage, some made by his friend Favio in Sao Paulo. The cushion-pillows can then be used by the new owners as social sculptures or ever changing sofas or playthings, with the users manual just giving some possible ideas of the possible situations to be experienced in them.

EXHIBITIONS, PROJECTS AND TEXTS BY PLB

ABOUT ME

"At the end of the fifteenth of his 'Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Mankind' Schiller states a paradox and makes a promise. He declares that ‘Man is only completely human when he plays’, and assures us that this paradox is capable ‘of bearing the whole edifice of the art of the beautiful and of the still more difficult art of living’. We could reformulate this thought as follows: there exists a specific sensory experience—the aesthetic—that holds the promise of both a new world of Art and a new life for individuals and the community. There are different ways of coming to terms with this statement and this promise. You can say that they virtually define the ‘aesthetic illusion’ as a device which merely serves to mask the reality that aesthetic judgement is structured by class domination. In my view that is not the most productive approach..." from
Jacques Rancier, 'The Aesthetic Revolution and its Outcomes', New Left Review 14, April-March 2002

SHORT BIO

Pablo León de la Barra is an exhibition maker, independent curator and researcher. He was born in Mexico City in 1972. León de la Barra has a PhD in History and Theories from the Architectural Association, London. He has curated among other exhibitions ‘To Be Political it Has to Look Nice’ (2003) at apexart and Art in General in New York; ‘PR04 Biennale’ (2004, co-curator) in Puerto Rico; ‘George and Dragon at ICA’ (2005) at the ICA-London; ‘Glory Hole’ (2006) at the Architecture Foundation-London; ‘Sueño de Casa Propia’(2007-2008, in collaboration with Maria Ines Rodriguez) at Centre de Art Contemporaine-Geneve, Casa Encendida-Madrid, Casa del Lago-Mexico City, and Cordoba, Spain; ‘This Is Not America’ at Beta Local in San Juan, Puerto Rico (2009); ‘Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, Yucatan and Elsewhere’, at the CCE in Guatemala (2010); ‘To Know Him Is To Love Him’, Cerith Wyn Evans at Casa Barragan, Mexico City (2010); ‘Incidents of Mirror Travel in Yucatan and Elsewhere’, at Museo Tamayo, Mexico City (2011); 'Bananas is my Business: the Southamerican Way' at Museu Carmen Miranda, Rio de Janeiro (co-curated with Julieta Gonzalez, 2011); 'MicroclimaS' at Kunsthalle Zurich (2012); 'Esquemas para una Oda Tropical', Rio de Janeiro, 2012; 'Marta 'Che' Traba' at Museo La Ene, Buenos Aires (2012); Novo Museo Tropical at Teoretica, San Jose, Costa Rica (2012); Museu Labirinto / Museum of Unlimited Growth, ArtRio, Rio de Janeiro (2012); The Camino Real Arcades, Lima, Peru (2012). PLB has acted as advisor and/or art curator for the following art fairs: Pinta/London (2010-12), Maco/Mexico (2009-1012), Circa/Puerto Rico (2010), La Otra/Bogota (2009), ArteBA/ Buenos Aires (2012), ArtRio/Rio de Janeiro (2011-2013). León de la Barra has written amongst other publications for: Frog/Paris, PinUp/New York, Purple/Paris, Spike/Austria, Tar/Italy, Wallpaper/London, Celeste/Mexico, Tomo/Mexico, Rufino/Mexico, Ramona/Buenos Aires, Metropolis M/Amsterdam, Numero Cero/Puerto Rico. PLB has also written texts for many artists and exhibition catalogues, lectured internationally and participated in many international symposiums where relevant topics to arts, culture and society have been discussed. PLB was co-director of ‘24-7’ an artists-curatorial collective in London from 2002-2005 and artistic director of ‘Blow de la Barra’ in London from 2005-2008. From 2005 to 2012 he was curator of the White Cubicle Gallery in London, a community art space which he also founded. He is also founder of the Novo Museo Tropical, a museum yet to physically exist somewhere in the tropics and curated the First Bienal Tropical in San Juan Puerto Rico (2011). He is also the publisher of Pablo Internacional Editions and editor of his own blog the Centre for the Aesthetic Revolution. He lives and works between London, Mexico City, Los Angeles, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, San Juan, Bogota, Lima, Athens, Beirut...